Pottstown Rumble final day ends with familiar champions

POTTSTOWN — As twilight fell, two pairs who’d fought through two full days of Men’s Open play at the Pottstown Rumble battled in an evenly-matched final for $5,000 before a crowd of hundreds.

When it was over, Hudson Bates and Mark Burik, the 2011 Rumble Men’s Open Champions, added the 2013 crown to their resumes.

“Honestly, the Rumble is the best grass tournament in the country, I think,” said Bates, from Richmond, Va. “They stepped it up big-time this year. Great organizers, great sponsors, it’s just a fun, fun tournament. It’s awesome.”

By winning two games 11-6 and 11-9 in the best of three final, Bates and Burik, from Queens, N.Y., beat a pair from Ellicott City, Md., whom the courtside announcer dubbed the “Maryland Marauders,” Aaron Russell and Eric Lucas.

The Men’s Open final is the marquee event with the highest purse at the Rumble.

“Honestly, the biggest difference in that match was we’ve got experience on those guys,” Bates said. “In two, three years, those guys are going to be unbeatable.”

Russell plays for the Penn State volleyball team and Lucas reportedly played for George Mason University’s squad.

The final was tied 7-7 then 9-9 before Bates and Burik were able to pull away and seal their win.

“We’ve played enough that we trust ourselves and we trust each other,” Burik said. “We don’t flip out or freak out when we get down. We just play the next point.”

The Men’s Open final proved to be high-octane, with a crowd in the Sly Fox Brewery Beer Tent, manned by employees of Craft Ale House and The Mercury, voicing some rowdy but good-natured support any time a ball came rocketing in.

Midway through the first game of the finals, two young girls and a boy were enlisted to chase down loose balls and feed them to the players. Summer Hanley, Summer Scott and Andrew Worobetz worked diligently as a team and sprinted after loose balls when they came in.

Preceding the final match, event organizer Kenny Kaas and a mascot dubbed the “Plastic Chicken” helped lead a group of about two dozen in the “Cupid Shuffle.” Burik, fresh off of warming up, joined in.

Under the lights of Saturday night, with live music filtering over from the beer tent, Svetlana Simic and Lauren Schmidt triumphed to win the Women’s Open Championship after a long day of battling through their bracket in the sun.

Simic and Schmidt took home $2,000 for their victory.

After that championship ended after 10 p.m., a few games continued on center court as late as 1:30 a.m.

During the fourth and final day of the Rumble, Sunday, everyone on hand was ready to call the event a rousing success.

“I love it,” said Meghan Bruch, a coed B player in the midst of the playoffs Sunday afternoon. “We come every year. We’re coming back next year.”

Misty May-Treanor, the three-time Olympic beach volleyball gold medalist, ran a clinic and hung out at the Rumble for its first three days, adding to what was the biggest Rumble yet in the 22 years it’s existed.

“We didn’t know she would be here so that was awesome when we found out,” Bruch said of herself and her younger brother, who participated in May-Treanor’s juniors tournament Friday. “She signed the back of my phone. She was great.”

“It’s been very good,” said Jeannie Bowman, a vendor working at Betty’s Old-Fashioned Lemonade.

It was her first experience.“Everybody’s really nice,” she said. “The players are all awesome.”

One hundred-fifty courts, 35 more than last year’s event, were spread out everywhere in Memorial Park and most were still being used late Sunday afternoon.

Nets were set up in the foul ground of Little League fields, curled around hills and up against the Manatawny Creek.